Another Chief Inspector Gamache book! I love these novels.
Here’s the blurb …
It is Winter Carnival in Quebec City, bitterly cold and surpassingly beautiful. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache has come not to join the revels but to recover from an investigation gone hauntingly wrong. But violent death is inescapable, even in the apparent sanctuary of the Literary and Historical Society – where an obsessive historian’s quest for the remains of the founder of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain, ends in murder. Could a secret buried with Champlain for nearly 400 years be so dreadful that someone would kill to protect it?
Although he is supposed to be on leave, Gamache cannot walk away from a crime that threatens to ignite long-smoldering tensions between the English and the French. Meanwhile, he is receiving disquieting letters from the village of Three Pines, where beloved Bistro owner Olivier was recently convicted of murder. “It doesn’t make sense,” Olivier’s partner writes every day. “He didn’t do it, you know.” As past and present collide in this astonishing novel, Gamache must relive the terrible event of his own past before he can bury his dead.
For this one Gamache and Beauvois, both recovering from terrible injuries, separate and solve different murders. Beauvois in Three Pines looking into the Hermit’s murder (A Brutal Telling), and Gamache gets swept up into an investigation in Quebec City. Once again, the descriptions are magnificent – I want to go to Quebec City now.
The structure of this one was interesting as well. We know something terrible has happened, Gamache and Beauvois are both on leave, but the story is unfolded gradually told from their different perspectives.
One of the women in my book club mentioned this book and as I thought I should be better informed about the Middle East, I decided to read it.
Here’s the blurb …
A stunning exploration of the Greater Middle East, where lasting stability has often seemed just out of reach but may hold the key to the shifting world order of the twenty-first century
The Greater Middle East, which Robert D. Kaplan defines as the vast region between the Mediterranean and China, encompassing much of the Arab world, parts of northern Africa, and Asia, existed for millennia as the crossroads of empire: Macedonian, Roman, Persian, Mongol, Ottoman, British, Soviet, American. But with the dissolution of empires in the twentieth century, postcolonial states have endeavored to maintain stability in the face of power struggles between factions, leadership vacuums, and the arbitrary borders drawn by exiting imperial rulers with little regard for geography or political groups on the ground. In the Loom of Time, Kaplan explores this broad, fraught space through reporting and travel writing to reveal deeper truths about the impacts of history on the present and how the requirements of stability over anarchy are often in conflict with the ideals of democratic governance.
In The Loom of Time, Kaplan makes the case for realism as an approach to the Greater Middle East. Just as Western attempts at democracy promotion across the Middle East have failed, a new form of economic imperialism is emerging today as China’s ambitions fall squarely within the region as the key link between Europe and East Asia. As in the past, the Greater Middle East will be a register of future great power struggles across the globe. And like in the past, thousands of years of imperial rule will continue to cast a long shadow on politics as it is practiced today.
To piece together the history of this remarkable place and what it suggests for the future, Kaplan weaves together classic texts, immersive travel writing, and a great variety of voices from every country that all compel the reader to look closely at the realities on the ground and to prioritize these facts over ideals on paper. The Loom of Time is a challenging, clear-eyed book that promises to reframe our vision of the global twenty-first century.
It is clear that Kaplan has spent a lot of time travelling in the Middle East (over a number of years), thinking about it and researching it. Although it was recently published, it was before Trump’s second presidency, which I think will have a profound impact on world politics.
I thought about anarchy and autocracy and how the latter might be preferred. There is information about the history – country by country – the revolutions, the ethnic groups, and the religions.
I was going to Tasmania for a holiday and I wanted to read a Tasmanian author (I think Robbie Arnott is from Launceston). I read The Rain Heron, so I was familiar with his work.
Here’s the blurb …
In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they discover there’s far more to the land and people of the highlands than they imagined. And as they close in on their prey, they’re forced to reckon with conflicts both ancient and deeply personal.
This is set in Australia because there are kangaroos, but I couldn’t say where. I laughed about the pumas being imported to hunt something else introduced, but preferring to eat the sheep instead – very Australian, cane toads anyone?
The descriptions of the landscape are magnificent, and I particularly enjoyed Iris’s connection to the highlands (her sense of peace and stillness).
The conflict between pastoralists and nature, pastoralists and the first people is a feature of this novel, but not in an overt manner (we’re not being beaten over the head here).
It does have an ambiguous ending, but I am imagining everyone happily living in Brazil.
Some quotes
And perhaps it was this mixture of wine and song; perhaps it was the hours spent in the company of cold mountains and still water, perhaps it was her lingering awareness of the ghostly grove surrounding the tavern; perhaps it was because she was momentarily free of Floyd, while knowing he was safe; perhaps it was the fatigue at the end of a hard day; perhaps it was all of it combined that made Iris lean back on her stool and feel a thin but taut connection to these things that were new to her, that were bright and strange, that she did not understand.
But it was not a claustrophobic feeling; there was pleasure in moving through it all, as if she was slowly discovering the right way – or perhaps just her way – to move through an old world.
She felt like a broom had been pulled through her, stiff bristles raking her straight, clean, her mind filling with a sense of unhurried purpose.
That last one in particular! How good is he at putting words together?
The theme for my book club this time is Rivers. I loved There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak and I will definitely talk about that novel, but I wanted to read something else as well. I googled novels about rivers and this came up. I have read and watched The Book Shop, so this was the perfect choice.
Here’s the blurb …
Penelope Fitzgerald’s Booker Prize-winning novel of loneliness and connecting is set among the houseboat community of the Thames, with an introduction from Alan Hollinghurst.
Offshore is a dry, genuinely funny novel, set among the houseboat community who rise and fall with the tide of the Thames on Battersea Reach. Living between land and water, they feel as if they belong to neither…
Maurice, a male prostitute, is the sympathetic friend to whom all the others turn. Nenna loves her husband but can’t get him back; her children run wild on the muddy foreshore. She feels drawn to Richard, the ex-RNVR city man whose converted minesweeper dominates the Reach. Is he sexually attractive because he can fold maps the right way? With this and other questions waiting to be answered, Offshore offers a delightful glimpse of the workings of an eccentric community.
As I haven’t read the introduction yet, I might be missing some of the more literary or subtle points.
I stayed in Battersea on my recent trip to London, and suffice to say this stretch of the Thames has been gentrified.
This is one of my photos – from the Chelsea side of the river
I would call this an ensemble novel, no one major character or view point. For a short period of time we follow the lives of a small house boat community – the boats (apart from one) are all a bit battered as are the people by life and circumstances, but they are kind and look out for each other.
The writing is beautiful, evocative of the place and time, insightful, and, at times, witty.
Here are some of my favourite quotes
And each one of them felt the patches, strains and gaps in their craft as if they were weak places in their own bodies.
I’m afraid I can’t claim to know much about knitting
Tilda cared nothing for the future, and had, as a result, a great capacity for happiness.
She was still at the RSM then, violin first study, and she fell in love as only a violinist can.
I came across this while searching my husband’s audible library – I haven’t read any of the previous novels (this is novel 12), so I have probably spoiled the earlier ones for myself. I liked it, I am planning on reading the first one while on a road trip.
Here’s the blurb …
When an intricate old map is found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines, it at first seems no more than a curiosity. But the closer the villagers look, the stranger it becomes.
Given to Armand Gamache as a gift the first day of his new job, the map eventually leads him to shattering secrets. To an old friend and older adversary. It leads the former Chief of Homicide for the Sûreté du Québec to places even he is afraid to go. But must.
And there he finds four young cadets in the Sûreté academy, and a dead professor. And, with the body, a copy of the old, odd map.
Everywhere Gamache turns, he sees Amelia Choquet, one of the cadets. Tattooed and pierced. Guarded and angry. Amelia is more likely to be found on the other side of a police line-up. And yet she is in the academy. A protégée of the murdered professor.
The focus of the investigation soon turns to Gamache himself and his mysterious relationship with Amelia, and his possible involvement in the crime. The frantic search for answers takes the investigators back to Three Pines and a stained glass window with its own horrific secrets.
For both Amelia Choquet and Armand Gamache, the time has come for a great reckoning.
Number-one New York Times bestselling author Louise Penny pulls back the layers to reveal a brilliant and emotionally powerful truth in her latest spellbinding novel.
I loved the setting, the characters and the plot. I loved the map and the Three Pines community. The emphasis on kindness and empathy, and not believing everything you think. It’s about second chances and that there is always a road back.
I have a paper copy and an audible version of this novel – in the end I listened to it.
I have to say I think the cover is misleading – there wasn’t frolicking in the water.
Here’s the blurb …
Justin has a curse, and thanks to a Reddit thread, it’s now all over the internet. Every woman he dates goes on to find their soul mate the second they break up. When a woman slides into his DMs with the same problem, they come up with a plan: They’ll date each other and break up. Their curses will cancel each other’s out, and they’ll both go on to find the love of their lives. It’s a bonkers idea… and it just might work.
Emma hadn’t planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially when they get to rent an adorable cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka.
It’s supposed to be a quick fling, just for the summer. But when Emma’s toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they’re suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected–including catching real feelings for each other. What if this time Fate has actually brought the perfect pair together?
I enjoyed this novel, it has more heft than you would expect from the cover. It’s witty, well-written, and moving. It touches on some serious issues – abandonment and mental illness, but does so in a respectful thoughtful manner. And Justin is a fabulous hero.
As I read and enjoyed The Offing, I was keen to read this one.
Here’s the blurb …
Cuddy is a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England. Incorporating poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts to create a novel like no other, Cuddy straddles historical eras – from the first Christian-slaying Viking invaders of the holy island of Lindisfarne in the 8th century to a contemporary England defined by class and austerity. Along the way we meet brewers and masons, archers and academics, monks and labourers, their visionary voices and stories echoing through their ancestors and down the ages. And all the while at the centre sits Durham Cathedral and the lives of those who live and work around this place of pilgrimage – their dreams, desires, connections and communities.
This is definitely experimental – each section is written in a different style.
The first part is like the image above, plus there are quotes from (genuine) history books – that are ordered in a way that keeps the story moving.
There’s a section that’s in second person, a play, a diary, and contemporary fiction.
I think it’s successful, an alternative history of Durham Cathedral through the eyes of some of the people involved in its long history.
The writing is beautiful, here are some of my favourite quotes;
Down there, getting grubby on the bed of waxen leaves. Drunk on the flavour. Dizzy on the fist of it. Sweaty in the grip of it. Biting on the bone of it.
Sanctury is granted and the Galilee bell rung to mark the moment, and the seeker then made to wear a robe that bears the yellow sign of our Cuthbert sewn onto one shoulder to show the world the generosity of our saint who offers his home without judgement. The fugitive is then given quarters and food and the time in which to pray for forgiveness, give confession and make peace with himself, then say farewell to the city, for then he is made to leave and guaranteed safe passage by a chaperone acting on the king’s orders.
He made this for you, over many hours, days, many weeks, maybe. You have never before been given something that serves no purpose other than to express – what exactly? Love? His love for you?
Counting imposes a system of order and breaks the day into increments. Counting is a form of control. It is calming, like prayer.
I was a little bit disappointed it the ending. I wanted more for Michael, but I guess that is the point, events (history) moves inexorably forward. This is a fabulous book, full of great detail, characters and descriptions. Written (successfully) in a variety of styles.
I a very dear friend lent this one to me. I didn’t know what to expect, but I trust her judgement. It is great – one of my favourite reads of the year (so far).
Here’s the blurb …
From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time. “Make place for Elif Shafak on your bookshelf… you won’t regret it.” (Arundhati Roy)
In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.
In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.
In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.
In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.
A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”
This novel has the structure of a water molecule – H2O. The two Hs are Narin and Zaleekah, and the O is Arthur. Their stories are separated by time, but connected. This is a watery novel with multitudes of water descriptions, metaphors and similes.
[about a rain drop] Inside its miniature orb, it holds the secret of infinity, a story uniquely its own.
But now a sense of foreboding tugs at his [Arthur] insides, like the pull of a river’s undercurrent
Just as a drop of rain or a pellet of hail, water in whatever form, will always remember, he too, will never forget.
It is as if love, by its fluid nature, its riverine force, is all about the melding of markers, to the extent that you can no longer tell where your being ends and another’s begins.
Yet the key element for her is, and always has been water. She says it washes away disease, purifies the mind, calms the heart. Water is the best cure for melancholy.
Time is a river that meanders, branching out into tributaries and rivulets, depositing sediments of stories along its shows in the hope that someday, someone, somewhere, will find them.
It’s also about women and their place (or lack of place) in the world. Nisaba, the goddess of storytelling, replaced by Nabu. ISIS taking the Yasidi women and girls making them slaves (all kinds of slavery).
He does not look at her. It does not occur to him that he might frighten her with his proximity, having never had cause to feel such fear himself.
It’s about family and what people are prepared to do for family.
It’s about colonialism and who owns the ancient artifacts.
Westerners take our past, our memories. And then they say, “Don’t worry, you can come and see them anytime”.
He [Arthur] firmly believes that he is here to help excavate and preserve antiquities that will surely be better off in the hands of Europeans than the natives.
This novel is breath-taking in its scope; Mesopotamia, Victorian London, modern London and modern Iraq. The writing is beautiful, the sense of place exquisite. Like all good writing, I feel like I have been on an adventure; trying to decipher cuneiform with Arthur, listening to Narin’s grand mother’s stories about their culture and heritage, cheering Zaleekah on as she explores new options (and realising just how far her family is prepared to go to protect one of its own).
I have read The Women Upstairs and The emperor’s Children – I enjoyed the former more than the latter, but was keen to give this one a go. And then it was nominated for the Booker Prize (but didn’t make the shortlist), which was my project this year.
Here’s the blurb …
An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest contemporary novelists.
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’s union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.
First, I knew nothing about Algeria (I knew it had been a French colony, but nothing about its independence). It sounds like a beautiful place, although I suspect it’s a bit troubled now as many former colonies are. This is a story about Gaston and Lucienne, their children and their grandchildren. It’s about life, love and family. It’s based on the author’s own family.
A few bits I highlighted
I know also that everything is connected, the constellations of our lives moving together in harmony and disharmony.
A story is not a line; it is a richer thing, one that circles and eddies, rises and falls, repeats upon itself.
We were on the one hand interchangeable and on the other each our selves.
[…] we had agency over only some small aspects of our stories
This strange eventful history that made a life. Not good or bad – rather, both good and bad – but that was not the point. Above all, they had been, for so long, wildly curious. Just to see, to experience all that they could, to set foot anywhere, to speak to anyone, taste anything, to learn, to know.
The writing is beautiful, I can see why it was nominated.
I am a Sally Rooney fan. I was keen to read this and my daughter received an ARC, but she didn’t get onto it, so in the end I listened to it (highly recommended by someone from my stitching group). It was a very good decision to listen to it, the narrator was fabulous.
Here’s the blurb …
Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.
For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair and possibility—a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.
I think this is my favourite of her novels. The writing is beautiful, it’s written from the perspectives of Ivan, Margaret and Peter, and each of their voices are different. I loved how internal it was, we were in their heads. Ivan was my favourite. There is a lot of thinking about what it means to be a good person and to live a good life. It is very thought provoking. And it’s about relationships: brothers, mothers and sons, lovers, and friends.
